Truthfully, I am not sure what to make of this prize. My first impulse was to flip it off. Your persistence has lead me to looking into it a bit deeper.
It appears that the prize may be a genuine attempt to gain real knowledge about the origins of life.
I Googled the topic. It seems that almost all sites that refer to this prize are Creationism/ID sites. They seem to have taken the position that because the question is being asked, it cannot be answered.
I wish the organization well but I do not expect to see valid answers come forth in this century. I am sure that theistic origins of life crowd will have a lot of fun with prize in the mean time.
"I Googled the topic. It seems that almost all sites that refer to this prize are Creationism/ID sites. They seem to have taken the position that because the question is being asked, it cannot be answered."
Oh, wait, scientists cannot admit that they don't know how life began. That's .... er, ... um, ... heresy! It's heresy, by George!
Those darn IDers will distort this issue. We may not know all the "details" of how life began, but we know with near certainty that it happened by random chance with no intelligent design! We do know that, don't we? Of course we do: Carl Sagan said so, and he has a Ph.D in SCIENCE.